April 16th

2 Kings 18-19

18:1-4 – Hezekiah is king of Judah and chooses to live faithfully.

18:16 – Gold that was, at one time, given as an offering to the Lord to build his home amongst the Israelites, was now stripped off and given to a foreign king. The change in the state of affairs is drastic.

18:19-25 – A message is sent from the king of Assyria to Hezekiah, the king of Judah, taunting him and saying that God will not be able to save Judah.

18:28-35 – Hezekiah was a king faithful to the Lord. Clearly the king of Assyria is trying to do everything he can to get the people of Judah to turn against Hezekiah and God.

18:36-1 – Hezekiah’s men all tore their clothes as a sign of deep sorrow and disgrace. They were afraid that the king of Assyria might be right.

19:6-7 – Isaiah, the next great prophet, assures Hezekiah and his men that God will rescue them and the king of Assyria will actually die in his own land.

19:10-13 – The king of Assyria’s bullying tactics are convincing. All the other kings Assyria had gone up against had fallen. Granted, their gods weren’t God.

19:29-31 – God gives Judah a sign that he actually is speaking and they can trust him.

Fun fact—The siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib is actually very well documented in extra-Biblical sources-namely, by Sennacherib himself. Assyrian kings didn’t record history so much as they recorded propaganda, so Assyrian historical documents never mention defeats or that Assyrian soldiers died in battle, so his account of the siege is a bit different. He mentions destroying 46 cities in Judah and trapping Hezekiah in Jerusalem “like a caged bird”, and he mentions returning home with his army, but he never mentions why he returned home.